Marching To The Beat Of A Different Reality

Monday, February 6, 2017

As Christian Parents, We Should Parent As Christians

Unfortunately, this is never a popular type post, but nonetheless, I believe it to be very true, so I hope it will be taken to heart as an exhortation and not an admonition: Recently, I was reading Proverbs 2:1-5 this morning.
Here Solomon asks us to 'turn our ears to wisdom and apply our hearts to understanding'.

My son,
if you accept my words
and store up my commands within you,
turning your ear to wisdom
and applying your heart to understanding
and cry aloud for understanding,
and search for it as for hidden treasure,
then you will understand the fear of the Lord
and find the knowledge of God.

My reading reminded me how often I become frustrated by the number of professing Christians who place their children in secular public school, not only allowing them to be present inside the belly of a rapidly devolving culture, but allowing them to participate in reading such 'literature' prescribed by teachers today as "The Kite Runner", "Glass Castles" and "The Bluest Eye". These are all books that have very sexually explicit language including curse words such as 'f**k', yet parents seem to believe - without attempting to read them for themselves before proffering them up to the developing minds of their children - that if the teacher assigns it, it must be fine. I don't believe this, which is one of the reason I removed my children from that environment, but I truly can't understand why other professing Christians would believe this. Some time ago a man caught up with me at church and asked me to counsel him about the education of his son, who attended a local public high school. His question wasn't even about literature, but I asked him about his son's reading assignments as our conversation drew to a close - because I had just completed an article for the Federalist about the prurient nature of high school assigned reading. Yes, he admitted, his son had been assigned one of the books on the list, yet he had not read it, nor asked his son to give him an account of his reading, nor, obviously, adjured him to stop reading it, nor confronted the teacher, by informing her he would not read it and she would have to allow him another reading assignment. Truly, if we - as parents - decide our parenting is going to consist of a series of parries and retreats, not a consistent stabbing at the heart of what they are doing when out of our care - OR if we choose to parent in ignorance of actual fact simply because we trust others to raise our children, OR decide we don't want to cause a scene, OR we don't know how to handle the information we might get - we might as well dig a hole in the sand and hide our head in it because we are no better than Jesus' comment about the blind leading the blind. Our child will fall into the ditch and pull us in behind him. Parents, we need to practice scripture - practice our Christianity - with our children EVERY DAY, not just Sunday. We are called to be salt and light it's true, but we are not Abrahams and we are not called to sacrifice our Isaacs on the alter of Paganism simply to keep from experiencing social discomfort.
Please wake up. We will not be able to win souls for Christ unless - and until - we can take back the responsibility of educating our own children. Evangelism starts at home and - unfortunately - there's no way to get around that fact.